


The Farther One Travels, The Less One Knows

by EssieFreds



Series: The 'It Gets Worse!' Universe (Earth-293156) [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: But they're all friends so it's okay in the end, Capitalism is the villain, Colorado, F/M, Stanley Hotel, Trip gone wrong, haunted hotels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:46:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24242269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssieFreds/pseuds/EssieFreds
Summary: The Quadrivium takes a trip out west to experience the Stanley Hotel. Things don't exactly go the way they expected, but hey, at least they have each other.Right?
Relationships: Ned Leeds & Harry Osborn & Peter Parker, Peter Parker/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The 'It Gets Worse!' Universe (Earth-293156) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1417432
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	1. The First Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Quadrivium arrives at The Stanley Hotel, and realize pretty much immediately that the place isn't what they'd expected.

**June 28th, 2024 - Stanley Hotel - 333 E Wonderview Ave, Estes Park, CO, USA**

“I can’t believe we’re actually here!” Cheri said, bouncing up and down, much like an over-excited child. Peter smiled in response, and finished tugging their luggage out of the trunk of their rental car. Harry was climbing out of the backseat, and he groaned, stretching a little. 

“That sucked,” he announced. “Why didn’t we fly first class?” 

“How many times are you going to ask that?” Ned queried, coming around to the trunk to help Peter with the bags. 

“Until someone gives me a better answer than, ‘Because we didn’t think we needed to,’” Harry replied, grunting as his back cracked. “Oof, okay.” He then turned to face the hotel itself, and his eyebrows raised a little. “So, this is where _The Shining_ was thought of, huh?” 

“Well, it inspired _The Shining,”_ Cheri clarified. “Apparently, while he was here, Stephen King had, like, super vivid nightmares, and the way that Jack Torrance blew up at the end of the book came from a story he heard about an apparition he saw.” 

“Someone blew up?” Harry asked, and she nodded. 

“The head maid. The power went out, and so she went around to light the lamps in each of the rooms, except there was one room that had a gas leak, and when she opened the door, it blew up in her face.” 

“Holy shit,” Ned said, closing the trunk. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Cheri agreed. 

“You did research on all the ghosts that are apparently here, right?” Peter asked, picking up two of the suitcases. 

“Mhm.” She shimmied her shoulders a little, and took one of the bags from him. “I’m so excited. Thank you, Pete.”

He shrugged. “You graduated, and I know you’ve always wanted to come here, so.” He looked at the hotel himself for a moment, head cocked to the side. It was huge, and beautiful, too, but all the same, knowing what he did, there was still something ominous about it. 

“At least we’re not here during winter,” Harry said, quietly, and Ned shoved him with his elbow. Harry blew out a breath, but he was grinning, clearly amused. “What?” 

“Don’t say shit like that,” Ned grumbled, and he pushed Harry’s bag towards him. “Let’s go check-in.”

All four of them headed towards the front entrance. Cheri squealed, halfway there, and hurried over to a large sign that said _The Stanley Historic District._

“Take my picture!” she said excitedly. 

“Cher, how about we get our stuff in our rooms, first, and then we can explore and take pictures?” Peter suggested. 

Her shoulders fell, but she trudged back over to them. “Fine,” she mumbled, a little disheartened. 

“It kinda reminds me of the White House,” Ned commented as they kept walking. 

“It’s fifteen million times cooler than the White House strictly because Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson never lived here,” Harry said, lugging his duffle bag. “Christ, what did I pack, rocks?” Peter reached over and took it from him. Harry smiled at him. “Thanks, babe.” 

“You’re welcome,” Peter said, amused. 

“There can’t be any queer-baiting while we’re here,” Cheri said. “Apparently one of the ghosts is very old-fashioned, and she hates unmarried couples _and_ gay people staying in the same room together.” 

“Oop,” Ned said, with a nervous laugh. “We broke both of those rules just by existing.”

“I think I’ll have to have a conversation with this ghost,” Harry said, holding open the door for all of them, being the only one without a suitcase to carry. “Who are they?” 

“Her name is Mrs. Wilson,” Cheri answered, walking inside first. “Holy _shit!”_

Peter shook his head, never feeling so in love, and followed her. Ned and Harry did the same, and they rounded a corner into the main lobby. 

“Wow,” Ned said, looking around. “This is nice.”

“Look at the fuckin’ staircase,” Harry said, gesturing towards it. “That’s where that one picture was taken, right? Of the figure?” 

“Yep.” They all turned towards the new voice, and saw that it had come from the woman standing behind the front desk, which was off to the side of a pretty grand looking fireplace that had four leather armchairs stationed in front of it. She smiled at them all. “I see you’re not here to enjoy the beautiful Colorado weather.”

“Well, that’s part of it,” Peter said, walking over to the desk, “but my fiancée’s a pretty big Stephen King fan, and she’s always wanted to come here.”

“That seems to be the reason for guests to visit, more often than not,” the woman said. Her name tag dubbed her “Jennifer”. “Let’s get you checked in, then, so that you can start exploring.” 

Cheri joined Peter at the desk. Ned and Harry had both settled down into armchairs. “The reservation is under Parker,” Peter said to Jennifer, who was typing away at the computer that was definitely out of place in the historic surroundings of the lobby. 

“I see you requested room 217,” Jennifer said. “Luckily, you’re here at a pretty open time for the Stanley, so we can get you in there.” She considered. “You requested another room, too, but didn’t specify if you wanted it to be one of the “Spirited” rooms or not.”

“Yeah, that one is for our friends,” Cheri said, gesturing towards where Ned and Harry were sitting. She considered Peter for a moment, and then smiled devilishly, and leaned across the desk towards Jennifer. “Can you put them in room 418?”

“I can,” Jennifer replied, smiling a little as well. 

“Oh, Cheri, don’t do that to them,” Peter said, quietly. 

Cheri made a face at him. “Why not? We’re all here for the experience, right?” She turned back to Jennifer. “Go ahead.”

Peter sighed, quietly, and pretended not to be involved. 

“Okay,” Jennifer said after a moment. “You prepaid, so we’re all done, here. Let me get the keys.”

She turned to the wall behind her, and Cheri leaned up on her toes, preening. “I’m so happy,” she said to Peter, who leaned over slightly to touch his forehead to hers. Jennifer walked back over to the desk, and slid two keys across it towards them. They had little tags dangling from them that said “217” and “418”. 

“There you go,” she said. “Enjoy your stay.”

Cheri snatched up the keys, and trotted over to Harry and Ned. Peter followed, carrying the luggage. 

“Here,” Cheri said, and handed the key to 418 to Harry. He looked at it for a moment, and then up at her, and Peter. 

“Is this one haunted?” he asked. “‘Cause I don’t know if I’m down with that.”

“Nah,” Cheri told him. “You’ll be fine.” 

“We should’ve stayed in the Presidential Cottage,” Ned said, scrolling through his phone. “It’s like a private house on the grounds.”

“That’s not any fun,” Cheri said. “We want to be right in the action, so we can go poking around at 3 in the morning like all the YouTubers do in their videos.”

Harry snorted, and stood up. “I am not going to be awake at three in the morning,” he informed her. “Did you guys get 217, like you wanted?”

“Yeah,” Peter answered, his shoulders sagging, a little. “If we end up dead -”

“We’re not going to die,” Cheri said with a roll of her eyes. “We just might experience some really bad nightmares, and like, never be able to look at one another the same way again.” 

Peter’s eyebrows raised slightly, but he didn’t get the chance to say anything, because she was already walking away towards the stairs. He turned to Harry, who was grinning a bit. He shrugged, and went after her, whistling cheerfully. 

“Did I make a mistake?” Peter asked Ned, who picked up his suitcase, and then took Harry’s duffle from him.

“Guess we’ll find out,” he said, and followed the other two. 

Cheri and Peter stopped on the second floor, while Ned and Harry kept going up. “We’ll meet you downstairs!” Cheri called after them, and then hurried down the hall of 200-level rooms. Peter adjusted his grip on their luggage before doing the same. 

“Look,” Cheri said. Peter did, and saw that they’d found it, room 217. Of course it had to be one of the rooms that was positioned at the very end of the hallway. “Holy shit,” she said, quietly. “I think I’m going to have a heart-attack. Stephen King stood right here, in 1974.” 

“Easy,” Peter said, amused. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to be just fine.” 

“Okay,” Cheri said after a moment. She blew out a breath of air, and then used the key to unlock the door. It opened inwards. 

They both lingered outside, not wanting to go in first. The realization of where they actually were was starting to set in, whether or not they believed in the ghost stuff. The fact of the matter was that Stephen King had gotten the idea for _The Shining_ at this hotel, partially because of this particular room. It had to have been because of _something._

“Okay,” Cheri said again, and she stepped inside. Peter followed. 

The room itself was very nice. Cheri immediately went to the desk in one corner and sat down at it, laughing a little. 

“I bet he sat here and typed at his typewriter, just…” She mimed doing so, and Peter snorted, setting down their luggage on the floor near the bed. 

“It isn’t as big as I’d thought it’d be,” he said after looking around for a moment. “It’s nice, though.”

Cheri nodded in agreement, standing up and walking over to the window. She tugged back the curtain, and smiled at the view, before turning to look at him. “What do you think?” she queried. “Should we christen it?” 

Peter smirked, slipping his arms around her waist when she walked over to him. “Aren’t you worried about the ghost that doesn’t like unmarried couples staying together in the same room?” he asked her, and she snorted.

“You know I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, and leaned up on her toes to kiss him.

* * *

Upstairs, Harry, who’d immediately ducked into the bathroom to pee after he and Ned had arrived at their room, stood in front of the sink. He glanced up at his reflection as he finished washing his hands, and blinked when he saw a smudge on the bottom edge of the mirror. 

“Hey, Ned?” he called. 

“What?” 

“Is -” Harry huffed outwards, and pulled open the door of the bathroom. “Come look at this.”

“I don’t want to see your dick, Harry.”

“That ship has set sail, wrecked, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, dude,” Harry retorted. “Anyway, it’s not my dick.” 

Ned sighed, but shuffled towards the bathroom anyway. When he poked his head inside, Harry gestured towards the smudge. “Does that look like a handprint to you, too, or is my mind already being stupid?” he asked. 

Ned considered the smudge for a moment, and then shrugged. “It’s definitely not just a smudge,” he said, “but I think your brain is making more of it than it actually is.” He walked away again. “Besides, this room isn’t haunted.”

Harry continued to study the smudge for a moment longer. He was _positive_ that it was in the shape of a child’s handprint, but maybe Ned was right, and he was just making that up on his own, to scare himself. 

He shivered involuntarily, and quickly scooted out of the bathroom. Ned had flipped open his suitcase, to retrieve the charger for his phone. 

“I told you not to use it on the flight,” Harry said to him. 

“I was bored,” Ned said. “I can’t sleep on planes.” 

“You think Cheri and Peter are… busy?” Harry queried, tugging his own duffle bag onto his bed. 

“Probably, horny bitches,” Ned sighed, rolling over onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. He cocked his head to the side, and then raised his arm, pointing. “What the hell is that?” 

Harry looked up as well, and frowned. “A stain?” he suggested, examining the dark spot on the otherwise pristine ceiling. “Why it’s there, I don’t know.”

“It’s very out of place,” Ned said. “I mean, literally, the ceiling is spotless except for that.” 

Harry blew out a frustrated breath. “We’re letting the idea of this place being haunted get to us,” he decided. “Humans love to scare themselves.” 

Even as he finished speaking, however, the door to the bathroom, which he’d left ajar, slammed shut. Ned and Harry both jumped, Ned sitting upright, his eyes wide. 

“What the fuck?” he asked, and Harry carefully walked back over to the bathroom. He tested the door handle, and then pushed the door open again, frowning at it. 

Ned appeared at his side, peering into the bathroom itself. After a moment, he leaned back again. “It was probably just a draft, right?” he asked, sounding a little hopeful. 

“Yeah,” Harry responded after a second. “Yeah, totally.” He reached out and pulled the door shut again, all the same, and then turned to Ned. “Let’s go explore the lobby some more.” 

“Good idea,” Ned agreed. “You have your phone right?” Harry patted his pocket, and Ned nodded. “Okay, just so Peter and Cheri can text us when they decide to stop having sex.” 

“Right,” Harry said, smirking. 

Ned led the way out of their room, and Harry made sure to lock the door behind them, before they headed for the stairs. 

Reaching the bottom, they found a pair of dudes standing at the reception desk. One of them, the shorter of the two, with dark hair, was looking around anxiously, while his friend, who was taller and blond, checked them in. 

“They’re here to get scared,” Ned commented to Harry as they walked past. 

“Yeah, probably,” Harry agreed. He was studying the walls, examining the decorations that were hung up. “It’s pretty minimalist, for such a high scale hotel.”

“I guess?” Ned hadn’t thought that the place was minimalist at all, but he had to remind himself that he and Harry had grown up in very different environments. “It’s nice, though.”

“Well, yeah,” Harry said. “I’m concerned by the amount of mirrors all over the place. Do they want us to look at ourselves and be reminded of how ugly we are?” Ned shot him a long-suffering look, and Harry smirked. “Well. Some of us.”

“Jackass,” Ned mumbled, pausing to examine the piano that was built into one end of the lobby. He ran his fingers over the keys. “Surprised Cheri didn’t, like, sniff this out, and run straight for it.” 

“Too horny,” Harry suggested, sitting down on the bench attached to it. “I can play, y’know.”

“You cannot,” Ned said, frowning at him. 

“Sure I can,” Harry said. “You think I grew up with Cheri and didn’t learn a thing or two about playing the piano?” He set his hands down on the keys, and played the intro to what sounded like Billy Joel’s _Vienna._ He only got that far, though, the music ringing loudly in the mostly empty lobby, before he pulled his hands back and put them in his lap again. He grinned up at Ned. “That’s about all I know.”

Ned snorted, and walked away. Harry stood and went after him. 

“Guess that’s the lobby,” he concluded, rejoining Ned near one of the windows looking out onto the main drive. “Should we venture outside?”

Ned looked over at him. “Without Cheri and Peter?” he asked, and Harry shrugged. 

“Their loss.” 

“Nobody’s loss,” Cheri’s voice said from behind them, and they both turned to see her trotting towards them, Peter trailing after her. She cocked her head, looking between Ned and Harry, frowning a little. “You were gonna explore without us?” 

“Well, we didn’t know what you two were doing,” Ned said, “or how long it would take.”

Peter’s ears went pink as he joined them, and he glanced downwards, sheepishly. “We’re here now,” he said. “Let’s go check out the hedge maze.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Harry agreed, cheerfully. 

The four of them went outside. Cheri got her picture next to the sign, Peter holding the camera, while Ned and Harry went on ahead towards the maze. Cheri and Peter rejoined them at the entrance. 

“The hedge animals that came to life in _The Shining_ were Stephen King’s creation,” Cheri said, examining the two statues on either side of the entrance. “When he made the movie, Stanley Kubrick decided to include the hedge maze at the Stanley instead, probably because the technology at the time didn’t really allow for realistic looking living animal hedges.”

“We should race to see who can get to the middle the fastest,” Harry suggested. 

“Ah, no,” Ned said at once. “I don’t want to go in there by myself.”

“We could go in pairs,” Cheri said, warming to the idea. 

“Nope,” Ned said again. 

“It isn’t about being alone, you just don’t want to go in there,” Peter decided, tilting his head as he took his friend in.

Ned crossed his arms over his chest, clearly embarrassed. “So?” 

“It’s just a hedge maze, Ned,” Harry told him. “Nothing’s going to get you.”

“I don’t want to get lost,” Ned said, hotly. 

“You won’t,” Cheri said. She took his hand, and then Peter’s in her other one. “Come on, we’ll go together.”

Harry happily took Peter’s other hand. “This’ll be fun,” he decided. “Let’s go.”

He headed into the maze first, pulling Peter along behind him. Peter glanced back at Cheri, who offered him a smile in response, and tugged on Ned’s hand to get him moving as well. 

The four of them walked through the maze in a chain, Harry glancing back for opinions about which direction to go when they came to a fork. More often than not, Peter would only shrug, while Cheri would say, “Left.” As such, they ended up going left for the first three turns. 

“It can’t always be left,” Harry said as they came to a fourth. “We’ll end up going in a circle.”

“But left is the right answer always,” Cheri insisted. Harry shook his head, and looked at Peter. 

“Let’s try right, then,” Peter suggested. 

“We need to keep track of which turns we make,” Ned said, speaking up for the first time. “For when we go back out.”

Harry blew a raspberry. “What’s the fun in that? We all know that Peter could easily remember which way we went, but the point is to _get lost.”_

“Yeah,” Cheri agreed. “C’mon, Ned.” She jiggled his hand. “Live a little.”

“I’d _like_ to live,” Ned said, “but I won’t if we end up helplessly lost in here.”

Peter looked upwards, a little exasperated. “Ned, if worst comes to worst, I’ll get up on top of the hedges and be an eye in the sky, all right?” 

Ned only looked the slightest bit more pacified by this idea, but he didn’t offer any more complaints. Taking that as an agreement, Harry pushed on, going right this time. 

The maze _was_ pretty eerie, with how silent it was within the confines of the hedges. None of them spoke, even though they could all feel an odd weight in their chests that encouraged them to break the silence. Harry was no longer looking back for indications of what direction to go at forks in the path. They moved through the maze without talking to one another, without looking at one another. It was pretty oppressive. 

Finally, a form of relief flooded over the four of them when they reached the center of the maze. Harry seemed a little arrogant, having led them to the middle basically on his own. 

“See?” he prompted, finally breaking the chain by letting go of Peter’s hand. “I got us here. Now someone else needs to get us out.”

“Mazes are so dumb,” Ned said, kicking at a stone on the ground. It rolled off underneath one of the metal benches that formed a square in the center of the small courtyard. “There’s nothing waiting for you in the middle, and so you have to just turn around and go back. What the hell is the point?”

“I think that experience definitely brought us closer together as friends,” Harry said, a little sarcastically, and Ned glared at him. 

“Stop it,” Peter said, with a slight warning underneath the words. “Don’t fight. We’re supposed to have a good time this weekend.”

“Who’s fighting?” Harry queried. He sank down on one of the benches, setting his arms across the back of it. 

Peter sighed, and looked around for Cheri, to get her to say something as the mother of their two friends, only to see that she wasn’t in the courtyard. He spun around in a complete circle, his brow furrowing. “Cher?” he called, which got both Harry’s and Ned’s attentions. Harry sat up straight, and looked around. 

“Where the hell did she go?” he asked.

“Cheri?” Ned said, speaking a little louder than necessary. “I swear to God, Cheryl Schultz, if this is a fucking prank, none of us are _laughing.”_

There was no response, and Ned looked at Peter, clearly alarmed. Peter merely shook his head, and turned in another circle. “Cheri, seriously, come out,” he said. “Ned’s right, it isn’t funny!”

He waited for a moment, straining his ears to listen for her. Nothing. 

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, and immediately hopped up onto the hedges. They shook a little, beneath his weight, but did not collapse, thankfully. He peered into the pathways that he could see. “Cheri!” 

“Can you see her?” Harry asked from below. 

“No,” Peter said. His heart was hiking its way up into his throat. “No, I can’t.”

He jumped back down to the ground. Ned’s eyes were huge. “Maybe she just decided to go back on her own?” he asked, sounding a little desperate.

“I should’ve been able to see her, Ned,” Peter replied. “She couldn’t have gotten very far.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Fuck, where could she have gone?” 

“I don’t know,” Harry said, “but what are we even thinking? That one of the “ghosts” got her?” He shook his head. “We’re being stupid. She’s obviously just joking around with us, knowing that we’d get scared. She’s probably hiding in a hedge, waiting for us to go back out, so that she can jump out and make ourselves piss our pants.”

Peter blew out a breath, closing his eyes for a moment to center himself. It didn’t work. 

All the same, he nodded. “You’re right,” he said, looking at Harry. He managed to keep his voice steady, despite how tight his chest felt. “You’re right, she’s… she’s just pulling a prank.”

Ned’s eyes were closed, too, and there was a crease between his eyebrows. “This is a _shitty_ prank,” he said, stonily. 

Peter tried his best not to let his growing anxiety show. “Let’s… let’s just start heading back to the start of the maze,” he suggested. “We’ll find her on the way there, or she’ll come and find us, first, when she sees we left the center.”

“Good idea,” Harry agreed, and he gripped Peter’s hand, a little more tightly than Peter would’ve expected him too. “Let’s go.”

Ned took Harry’s other hand, frowning to himself, still. The three of them made their way back into the maze, Peter leading the way. He could hear Harry and Ned’s heartbeats; both were racing. His own was pounding painfully in his chest. 

“Why does it feel like the path is getting more narrow?” Ned whispered at one point, his voice alarmingly loud in the external silence. 

“You’re imagining things,” Harry mumbled back, although Peter quickly noted that he didn’t sound so sure. “Peter, you’re going super fast. Could you slow down, maybe?” 

Peter knew that he was moving quickly, but he wanted out of the maze, so that they could see if Cheri had already made her way out. He also wanted his friends to be quiet, so that he could listen for her, as best he could, above the other sounds his ears were picking up. 

The maze blurred around the edges, becoming a fuzzy mass of green, intrusive in his vision. His blood roared in his ears. He was straining his hearing too far, he needed to reign it in before his senses overloaded - 

Peter plowed right into Cheri, who stumbled around the corner he’d turned. All four of them ended up in a heap on the ground. 

“Cheri, what the fuck?” Harry demanded, disentangling himself from Ned. 

Peter pushed himself upright, so that he could look at his fiancée. She seemed dazed, and he quickly reached out to cup her face between his hands, glancing between her eyes for the signs of concussion Bruce had taught him about. She was extremely prone to head injuries, apparently, and it was his first instinct to check for one. 

“What happened?” he asked her, speaking softly. 

Cheri blinked a few times. Some awareness returned to her eyes, and she focused on him. 

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice low. “It - one second, I was in the center of the maze with you, and then the next I was… somewhere else in the maze instead.”

“Yeah, right,” Harry scoffed. “Like we believe that. You’re a shit liar, Cheri, and that was a shitty prank.”

“Prank?” Cheri looked at Harry, brow furrowed. _“Prank?_ Harry, I honestly don’t know what happened.” 

“Sure you don’t,” Harry retorted, hotly. Peter knew his anger was coming from the fear he’d felt, but still, Cheri seemed too frazzled to be shouted at, right now. 

“Harry, stop it,” Peter said, sharply, and then looked closely at Cheri. “Are you okay?” 

She inhaled, slowly. “My head hurts.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Ned suggested, rising to his feet. “We should get something to eat.” 

“Good idea,” Peter agreed. He stood as well, and then helped Cheri up. He started to scoop her into his arms bridal style, but she brushed him off. 

“I can walk,” she said, stubbornly.

Ned pulled Harry upright. Harry didn’t look at any of them as he said, “Peter, why don’t you save us some time and direct us from the top of the hedges?”

Peter didn’t want to leave Cheri’s side, but he had a feeling things would get worse the longer they were in the maze. 

“Fine,” he said in response to Harry’s suggestion, and hopped up to the top of the hedge. 

Thankfully, they were pretty close to the entrance. Peter directed the others through maybe five turns before they crossed under the archway they’d entered the maze through. He jumped back down to join them, and Cheri leaned into his side, sighing heavily. 

“Let’s pick a place to eat,” Peter suggested, looking to Ned. 

His friend nodded, and nudged Harry. “You’re the picky one,” he said. “Any ideas?”

“Not picky,” Harry grumbled. “ _Ill._ Restricted to a specific diet.”

“Whatever,” Ned replied. “What’s your “specific diet” feeling?”

Harry shrugged. “We drove past a few places on the way in,” he said. “Maybe we can pick one of those?”

“Good idea,” Peter agreed. He looked at Cheri, who was studying the ground, gnawing on her thumbnail. “Cher? How’s that sound?”

She started, and glanced up. “Sorry, what?” 

Peter exchanged another look with Ned, whose brow was creased in worry. Cheri let out a quiet sigh. 

“I kind of just… want to go lay down,” she admitted. 

“Cher, you should eat something,” Peter told her. 

“Well, we could bring her something?” Ned offered. 

Peter let his shoulders fall. “Okay,” he agreed. “Cheri, you and I’ll go back to the hotel, and Ned and Harry will go pick up some food.” He looked around at them all. “Sound good?”

“Peachy,” Harry muttered, already walking away, back in the direction of the hotel itself.


	2. The First Afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things, unsurprisingly in this universe, get worse!

The rest of their first day at the Stanley Hotel, which had been meant to be a fun exploration, turned into a sequestering in Peter and Cheri’s room. When he’d taken her up there, after the events in the maze, Cheri had immediately laid down on the bed and fallen asleep. Peter, not knowing what else to do, and not wanting to leave her alone in the room, had pulled out his laptop to get some work done. Tony had told him to stay _out_ of the Stark Industries system over the weekend, but it wasn’t as though Peter could go looking around the hotel on his own. 

Besides, it was better that he’d stayed with Cheri, because maybe thirty minutes into her nap, right after Peter had received a text from Ned that he and Harry were on their way back, she’d started to whimper in her sleep, and then to twist around on the bed. 

Immediately concerned, Peter abandoned his laptop and went over to the bed, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Cheri!” he said, loudly enough to startle her awake. Her eyes flew open, and she sat up with a gasp, her chest heaving. Peter watched her, eyes wide. “What happened?” he asked, carefully. 

Cheri inhaled, again, shakily, and glanced at him. “I don’t know,” she said, quietly. “Just… one of the nightmares I get, from being in a weird place.”

Peter let out a breath, not exactly in relief, but in understanding. He’d forgotten that she had those, sometimes. “It’s okay,” he assured, and then he climbed onto the bed with her, scooting around her until she could lean back against him. He noted that she’d apparently been sweating, too, because her back was damp. “It’s all right. You don’t need to be afraid, Cher. I’m here with you.”

“I know,” she replied. “I can’t exactly control the nightmare aspect, though.”

Peter managed a small smile. “No,” he agreed. “I guess you can’t.” He slid his arms around her, resting his chin against her head. “You’re okay, though, I promise. Your subconscious can chill out.” 

Thankfully, she let out a quiet, amused snort, which helped Peter to relax further. 

“Ned and Harry are on their way back with food,” he said. “They went to a cafe or something, got you a sandwich.”

Cheri nodded, leaning her head back against his collar bone. “Sorry, about earlier,” she apologized. “If I knew what had happened, I’d tell you.”

“I know,” Peter said, although a tiny voice in the back of his mind insisted that she’d just wandered off to scare them all, and that she’d put her acting to use in order to make it seem like she was just as confused by her disappearance as they’d been. 

The rest of him, though, the parts that trusted Cheri, and knew when she was lying, or acting, was calling bullshit on that idea. Something weird had happened, he just had no idea as to what. 

They sat quietly, Peter not having anything else to say, and Cheri still, clearly, exhausted, probably even more so now, considering her nightmare. Peter wondered if maybe this trip to the supposedly haunted hotel, on top of her tendency to struggle with sleeping in new, unfamiliar places, had been a bad idea. Sure, she’d always wanted to visit the place, but… maybe just visiting it, and not necessarily staying here, would’ve been the smarter choice. 

Maybe fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Peter scooted out from behind Cheri and walked over to open it, revealing Harry and Ned on the other side, holding bags of food. 

“Hey,” Peter said, and moved out of the way, so that they could enter the room. Ned did so first, and after a moment, Harry followed. Peter could tell pretty much immediately that his older friend felt guilty, no doubt for his harsh reaction to Cheri’s reappearance, earlier. He hoped Harry would take the initiative to apologize, without Peter telling him that it was okay to do so. 

“All right, we got ya sandwiches, we got ya french fries, we got ya ketchup,” Ned said, placing the bags he held on the desktop. He started to unload different containers, examining the pen marks on top of each one as he did so, and setting things aside accordingly. When both bags were emptied, he pointed to various groupings of containers. “Harold, Cheryl, and Peter Benjamin.”

“Thanks, Ned,” Peter said, smiling a bit as he picked up both his and Cheri’s food, carrying hers over to where she still sat on the bed. Harry had settled down at the foot of it, and made a weak grabby-hands gesture in the direction of the desk, before offering Ned his puppy dog eyes. 

Ned sighed, and handed Harry’s food off to him. “Needy,” he mumbled without venom. 

“Thank you,” Harry said, and he offered Ned a few kissy sounds before opening one of the containers he’d been handed. Inside of it was a salad. “There were a couple deer on the side of the road, on the way back.”

“Yeah?” Peter asked, looking up from his burger, which he’d been squeezing ketchup onto. “Like, a mom and a baby?”

Harry nodded, drizzling ranch dressing over the salad. “They were cute. I tried to get a picture, but Speed Racer over here was going too fast.” He jerked his head in Ned’s direction. Ned merely pursed his lips in response, picking up one half of the sandwich he had in his own container, seated behind the desk. 

“The speed limit was 65. I wasn’t going to slow down to forty for you to take a picture of some damn deer.”

“Those “damn deer” were probably the best thing about this whole trip,” Harry informed him. He stabbed at his salad for a moment. “I mean, considering.”

Peter let out a breath, and glanced at Cheri, who’d been silent thus far. She had yet to open the container most likely containing the sandwich they’d brought back for her, and had instead opened the smaller one, which held french fries. Peter offered her a ketchup package, but she shook her head in response, which was troublesome, considering Peter knew Cheri never ate french fries without ketchup. 

“Cher, you should eat,” he said. 

“I know,” she said, quietly, and then she sighed and closed the lid of the container, pushing both away from her. “I’m not hungry, though.”

Peter looked over at Harry when he inhaled, clearly about to start speaking. “I’m sorry about earlier, Cheri,” he said, and Cheri glanced up at him. 

“You were right to be pissed,” she replied. “It - I wish I could explain what happened, exactly, but I don’t know how. Still, though, I shouldn’t’ve… disappeared, like that.”

“Well, according to you, you didn’t mean to,” Harry said, “and we… I mean, we’ve experienced too much supernatural shit to not be worried about it being a possibility, at least a little, right?”

The corner of Cheri’s mouth lifted, Peter was relieved to see. “We may have encountered a skinwalker a single time,” she said, and Harry shrugged. 

“Still. It’s enough for me to think anything’s possible.” He looked over at Ned. “Besides, some… some shit’s happened that… y’know, makes me wonder if maybe there’s something to the whole ghost thing.”

Cheri’s eyebrows lifted, and Peter could feel his own doing the same. Neither Harry nor Ned had mentioned this before. “Like what?” Cheri asked him. 

Harry sighed a little, and looked to Ned for help. Their other friend lifted one shoulder, focused on his sandwich. “There was a mark on the mirror in our bathroom that sort of looked like a handprint, and there’s a weird stain on our ceiling. And the bathroom door slammed on its own.” He glanced up. “But all of that’s pretty easily explainable, right? We’ve all seen _Buzzfeed Unsolved_ enough to not let dumb stuff like that get to us.”

“Maybe anywhere else,” Peter said, softly, and they all looked at him. He exhaled, and looked down at his burger. “I’m just saying.”

As he took a bite out of it, he watched, grateful, as Cheri opened the container holding her sandwich, this time, and picked up one of the pieces of it. They all ate in silence for a moment. 

Eventually, Harry cleared his throat, and said, “No one will think I’m a little bitch if I say that I’d rather we all sleep in the same room tonight, will they?” 

Peter heard Ned exhale a relieved breath. “No,” he said, “because believe me, I’m glad you said it first. I thought it’d sound bad coming from me.”

Peter smiled a bit, and looked at Cheri, who’d finished one half of her sandwich. “Is it okay if they sleep in here with us?” he asked her.

She looked at both Ned and Harry for a moment, before smirking a bit, and shrugging. “Why the hell not?” she asked. “I mean, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing the four of us have done.”

That was very true. Peter was immediately reminded of the time the three boys had drawn one another naked, and Cheri had filmed the whole thing, after they’d lost a bet with someone. He grinned, and looked at the other two. 

“There you go, then,” he said, and then teasingly, added, “you boys get to sleep with Mommy and Daddy, tonight.”

“Ew!” Ned exclaimed, hotly, while Harry hummed a bit, contemplatively. 

“Is the term _sleep_ being applied literally, or is it a euphemism for something else?” he asked, plainly. “‘Cause, you both know I’m down, but Ned…?”

“I would _never_ have sex _with any of you,_ let alone _all three of you at once,”_ Ned said, although he was flushed, Peter could tell. 

“Whatever, Ned,” he said, easily. “You can sleep on the floor.”

Harry whooped, and Cheri snickered into her fist, while Ned huffed outwards and focused again on his sandwich. 

“You guys are sick,” he muttered. 

“We’ll get you laid eventually, man,” Harry assured him, grinning widely. 

“I don’t need any help from you, thanks,” Ned grumbled at once, sounding a little defensive to Peter, but he decided to leave Ned alone in favor of looking at Cheri again. At least she was eating, now. 

“Are you feeling any better?” he asked her, and she nodded. “You sure?”

Cheri offered him a smile, and Peter was relieved to see that it was genuine. “Yes,” she said, gently. “I’m fine, Pete. Thanks.”

Peter’s attention was drawn away from her by the sound of Harry squealing, and he saw that a ketchup covered french fly had splattered against his forehead. Ned howled with laughter as Harry reached up and plucked the french fry away from his skin, scowling at it, and then at Ned. 

“I can’t fucking believe,” he started, lowly, “that you threw a fucking french fry at me. With _my_ complexion? How _dare_ you?”

Ned continued to chortle, too busy laughing to give Harry a response. “Fuck you,” Harry muttered, and he stood up from the bed, walking away to the bathroom to wash off his forehead. Peter offered Ned a look. 

“Why would you do that?” he asked, and Ned shrugged. 

“I thought it would be funny,” he said, sniffling, “and it was.”

From the bathroom, Peter heard the sink turn on, and after a moment, Harry inhaled, sharply. Peter immediately stood up, concerned, and hurried to the bathroom, looking in through the door. Harry had sat down on the edge of the claw foot bathtub, his eyes wide, face pale. 

“Harry, what happened?” Peter prompted. 

“It - the mirror -”

Peter opened the door wider so that he could see what Harry was pointing at. His eyebrows shot up, as soon as he saw the mirror. From behind him, he heard Cheri ask, quietly, “What is it?” 

“The mirror’s cracked,” Peter explained, stepping into the bathroom so that she could see it as well. He walked over to the mirror, and traced his finger up the length of the crack, which split his reflection in half, vertically. He looked over at Harry. “It might’ve been cracked already.”

“No, it - it cracked when I was standing right there!” Harry said, pointing to where Peter currently was. “I turned the sink on, and looked up, and it was _cracked.”_

“Harry -”

“I _swear,”_ his friend insisted, looking between Peter and Cheri. “Why the fuck would I lie?”

Cheri looked at Peter, her brow furrowed. Peter let out a breath.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll - I mean, we’ll obviously pay to have it fixed.”

“We shouldn’t - we didn’t break it!” Harry exclaimed. 

“What’s happening?” Ned asked, peering over Cheri’s shoulder. 

“The mirror’s cracked,” Peter explained, scooting past both of them. He went to pull on his shoes, aware that the others had followed him back into the room proper. “I’m going to go downstairs and tell whoever’s at the front desk right now.”

“Peter, if Harry’s telling the truth, we shouldn’t have to pay for it to be fixed,” Cheri said, carefully. “I mean, we didn’t break it.”

“Maybe not,” Peter said, finishing with his shoes, “but are they really going to believe that it cracked on its own?”

“Obviously it didn’t _crack on its own,”_ Harry said, hotly, pushing between Ned and Cheri so that he could stand in front of Peter. “This hotel’s _fucked up,_ dude.” 

Peter shook his head. “Harry -”

“Pete, I think he might be right,” Cheri said, and Peter looked at her. She shrugged her shoulders. “I mean, you know that I don’t believe in ghosts, but there’s… there’s something not right going on, here.” 

Harry gestured to her, and Ned said, “Yeah, man, it’s… this place is fucking weird. Like, it’s cool, but it’s… it’s got a bad energy or something, I don’t know.”

Peter looked between all three of them for a moment, before sighing to himself. “I know,” he said, “but… what’re we supposed to do about it? I mean, do you guys want to go somewhere else? We probably won’t be able to refunds on the rooms -”

Cheri shook her head. “That wouldn’t be fair to you, or to Mr. Stark,” she said. “Just… maybe this shouldn’t be a party.”

There was silence. Clearly, no one knew what to say in response to that. Before Peter could think of anything, there was a loud thump from out in the hall. They all jumped, and turned towards the door of the room, as the door knob started to rattle, violently, as though someone were trying to get in. Harry scooted backwards, further away from the door, Ned and Cheri doing the same. Peter stood up from the edge of the bed and moved in front of all three of them, frowning at the door. The rattling continued for maybe thirty more seconds, before coming to an abrupt end. It then sounded as though someone stomped away down the hall. 

“What the fuck,” Ned finally whispered. 

“I don’t know,” Peter responded, “but… yeah, there’s something going on here.” He hesitated. “But maybe that’s part of the draw? The hotel staff pulls stunts on people who they know are looking to find something. Maybe that’s why that lady at the front desk asked earlier.”

He turned to look at the others, when no one responded. They were all looking elsewhere, Cheri at the floor, Ned up at the ceiling, and Harry out the window behind him. He walked over to it, peering outside. For a long moment, no one said anything. 

Finally, though, Harry scoffed quietly, and turned back to face all of them. “Maybe he’s right,” he suggested. “I mean, maybe they took Stephen King’s story and decided to run with it for publicity. The dude was fucked up, right? Like, an alcoholic, drug-addict fucked up. Maybe the dream he had was just his head being wacky, and had nothing to do with the hotel itself, but he decided to write it off that way.” He shrugged. “I mean, thinking about it that way, thinking that everything that goes on here is just a stunt pulled by the staff, will make me feel a fuck ton better.”

Ned inhaled a little. “But… all the people who died here -”

“No one died, Ned,” Cheri said, quietly.

“Not even the lady that got blown up?” 

She shook her head. “She fell through the ceiling of the room, sprained her ankle. People just like to say that she came back to haunt this place because she spent so much of her adult life here.” 

More silence. Ned didn’t seem pacified, but Harry, at least, looked a little bit more relaxed. Cheri, too, seemed more inclined to believe the idea of everything being meant to scare people on purpose, to encourage more stories leaving the hotel about its infamous hauntings. Peter thought that this was good, that if nothing else, they’d at least stop feeling as though they were in danger, or whatever. 

Finally, Harry exhaled a breath. “I don’t know about you guys,” he said, “but I need a fuckin’ drink, so I’m gonna go find the bar in this place.”

“Yeah,” Ned said after a moment, as Harry moved past them towards the door of the room. “That’s something I can agree with him on.”

They exited the room, and Peter glanced at Cheri, who was looking out the window herself, now. After a moment, he said, “The idea of it being a stunt doesn’t explain what happened in the maze.”

“I know,” she said, “but I’d rather not think about that.” She exhaled, wearily, and turned to him. “I’m going to get a drink, too. Preferably of something that might knock me out if I drink enough of it.”

Peter’s shoulders slumped. “All right,” he said, quietly. “Let’s go.”


	3. The First Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drinking doesn't help matters in the slightest, especially when alcohol makes one bold.

The four of them spent about two hours down in the bar, shoved into a booth against the wall opposite from the bar itself. Harry was drinking a fruity cocktail of some kind, along with the water the other three had forced him to order as well. Ned had sucked down four different hard lemonades. Cheri was drinking whisky; she’d developed a taste for it, after hanging out with Tony one too many times. 

Peter, knowing that alcohol wouldn’t help with his own frayed nerves, was drinking a soda. When he’d ordered it, the bartender had raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised. Peter had ignored it, however, and had carried his soda over to the booth, also ignoring the look that Harry gave him. 

“Can’t you at least pretend to be as miserable as the rest of us?” he’d asked, and Peter had ignored that, too. 

Now, two hours later, they were all sitting at the booth still, nursing the last of their various drinks. Cheri was gazing down at what remained of her third whisky on the rocks, which wasn’t much. Peter could tell the alcohol was starting to get to her; she’d slumped against his arm, clearly weary. 

“Hey,” he began, nudging her a little. “I asked about the piano in the music room, when I made reservations. They said that guests are allowed to play it.”

“Great,” Cheri mumbled, sitting up and running her hand down her face. “I don’t think I’m coordinated enough to play piano right now.”

“I don’t think I’m coordinated enough to _stand_ right now,” Ned put in, his chin resting in his hand, eyes drooping. 

“Well, you better hope so,” Peter said, trying for lightness, “because I’m not carrying you up the stairs.”

Harry sighed, and scratched the top of his head, yawning. “I’m fucking exhausted,” he said, looking around at the three of them. “I’m ready to go to bed.”

“Yeah, I could get behind that,” Cheri agreed. “I wanna shower first, but then I’m going to sleep.”

“You want to _shower_ in the _murder bathroom?”_ Ned hissed, and Cheri offered him a dry look. 

“I told you, no one’s actually died here,” she grumbled, and then pushed against Peter. “Move. I’m going upstairs.”

“Let’s all go,” Peter suggested, getting up from the booth. Cheri slid out after him, and immediately stumbled, the whisky clearly having caught up to her. He caught her, having sensed that she was going to fall, and steadied her, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “Come on, guys.”

He led Cheri out of the bar by her shoulders, aware of Harry and Ned following after him. He could hear Harry mumbling under his breath; it sounded to Peter like it might’ve been facts about trees, of all things, which really wasn’t super surprising. Ned was huffing a little, clearly trying to keep his steps straight. 

They made their way up the stairs, Peter grateful that the room was on the second floor. He helped Cheri rest against the wall, and then he got the door open before helping her into the room. Ned and Harry shuffled in behind them, and Peter closed the door again, locking it with both the one on the knob, and the extra golden one at the top of the door itself. 

“All right,” he said. “Cheri, I don’t know if you should stand under the shower without anyone in the room with you, considering how much whisky you drank, so I’m gonna sit in the bathroom until you’re done.” He looked at Harry and Ned. “What’re the two of you going to do?” 

Ned blinked at the door for a moment. “I should go upstairs and get our bags,” he said. “Or at least a change of clothes. And, like, our toothbrushes.”

“Good idea,” Peter agreed. “Do you think you’ll make it up the stairs?”

“Yeah,” Ned said, and he blinked again, more fiercely, before shaking his head. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve drank more than that the night before a final, and managed to pass it with a B.” He walked back over to the door, and then paused, looking back at Harry, who’d slumped down on the chaise lounge at the foot of the bed. “Come with me.”

Harry whined. “Why?”

“So you can grab the shit you want,” Ned replied. “I’m not carrying it all on my own.”

“Just bring the fuckin’ bag,” Harry grumbled, curling up onto his side. “I’m staying right here.”

Ned sighed, tiredly, but all the same continued to the door, unlocking it again. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” he mumbled under his breath, and then disappeared out into the hall. 

Peter sighed, and looked at Harry. “Make sure he locks the door when he comes back,” he instructed, and Harry waved his hand in response. Peter turned to Cheri, who was leaning in the doorway of the bathroom. “Shower?”

“Yep,” she said, and turned and entered the bathroom, not bothering with the light as she went. Peter followed her, and settled down against the edge of the sink after flicking the light on himself, watching as she struggled to undress without losing her balance. 

“I never should’ve let Tony introduce you to whisky,” he decided after a moment, and Cheri attempted to give him the finger, but actually held up her pointer instead of her middle, and Peter had to smile to himself. “Wrong finger, Treble Clef.”

 _“Carajo,”_ she muttered, blinking at her hand, and then she turned towards the shower, still partially dressed. Peter sighed, and moved away from the sink to help her with the rest of her clothes, deciding that maybe he could take a shower, too. 

Out in the main room, Harry had pulled out his phone, and was scrolling through Reddit, not really taking in anything he passed by. He could hear Peter and Cheri in the bathroom, the shower running, them laughing about something. He was suddenly overcome with an intense wave of loneliness, despite being at a hotel with his three best friends, his family, essentially. He let his phone go dark, and dropped it on his chest, blinking up at the ceiling. 

Fuck the trip. It was supposed to have been a good time, but had turned into a night of drinking that all of them would regret tomorrow, even Peter, strictly because he’d allowed the other three to drink as much as they had, and would have to deal with their hangovers. Harry hoped that the hotel gift shop carried aspirin. He regretted not bringing his own. 

Footsteps trudged down the hall, and then Ned was coming through the door of the room, holding both their bags. 

“Lock the door,” Harry called to him, and heard Ned do so. “How’d it go? Run into any ghouls?”

“No,” Ned said, dropping their bags on the floor, “but there were more handprints on the mirror. They’re trying really hard.”

“Hm.” Harry forced himself into a sitting position. “This is stupid, but can we cuddle?”

Ned rolled his eyes. “I forgot that you get overly affectionate when you’re drunk,” he mumbled, but all the same crossed the room and sat down next to Harry, who immediately leaned into him, sniffling a little. He relaxed when Ned slid an arm around him. “You okay, man?”

“I dunno,” Harry said after a moment. “I’m just… sad all of a sudden.”

“Mm, yeah,” Ned sighed. “I get that. But you don’t need to be.”

“I know,” Harry assured. “It just… it hits, sometimes.”

He felt Ned nod, and then his friend squeezed him, just a little. “You’re okay,” he assured, gently. “We’re all here.”

After a moment, Harry hummed quietly in affirmation, and then pulled away from Ned, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand, before exhaling, heavily. “Ugh,” he said, quietly, “I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t drink, ever.”

Ned smiled a bit. “Probably not,” he agreed. “I bet Peter would appreciate not having to deal with all three of us at the same time.” He gestured. “Additional to, y’know, the general health benefits of not drinking.”

Harry returned the grin, and then shrugged. “Well, maybe I’ll try to give it a shot, considering.”

“Hey, dude, if you’re serious about that,” Ned said, his expression immediately going stoic, “I’d be down to help however I can.”

Harry smiled again, a bit more softly. “Thanks, Ned,” he said. 

The shower turned off in the bathroom, and after a couple more minutes, Cheri shuffled out, hair damp and hanging around her shoulders. Ned immediately covered his eyes with his hands, while Cheri merely snorted at him in response, dragging her suitcase over to herself so that she could retrieve clothes. 

“Like it bothers me, Ned,” she said. “I’m the one who willingly walked out wearing a towel.” She gestured. “Kick Peter’s bag over to me, though, would you?” 

Harry did so, when Ned didn’t move, having seen Cheri’s tits more times than he cared to remember. She pulled out some clothes for her boyfriend, too, and then disappeared back into the bathroom. Harry glanced at Ned. 

“Why would she come out when we’ve both seen Peter naked?” he asked. 

Ned let out a breath. “Because she has more confidence than you when she’s drunk,” he said. He shook his head. “I really want to brush my teeth.” 

“Same,” Harry agreed, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Another few minutes passed before both Cheri and Peter emerged from the bathroom, this time. Peter was flushed, and Harry doubted it was because the water had been hot. 

“Fuckin’ finally,” Harry announced, pushing himself to his feet. “Ned! Toothbrush.”

Ned eyed him apathetically. “Get it yourself.”

So much for the moment they’d shared. Harry rolled his eyes, and went to where Ned had dropped his duffle, squatting down next to it. He swayed a little, cocktail still toying with his balance, but stayed upright, and managed to get the bag unzipped. 

As he fished through it for his toothbrush and travel toothpaste, he looked over at Peter and Cheri. “So,” he started with a smirk, “who’s sleeping in the middle?”

Cheri shook her head. “Me, tit,” she told him. “I’m the smallest.” 

“The fuck does that matter?”

“Peter sprawls,” she explained, gesturing to her fiancé, who rubbed the back of his neck, sheepishly. “If I slept on the edge, I’d end up getting pushed off the bed.”

Harry sighed. “Fine, whatever,” he said, and stood again, sauntering into the bathroom. 

Cheri turned to Ned. “Are you sure you’re okay with sleeping on the floor?” she asked him. 

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’d much rather sleep on the floor than with you three hooligans.”

“We’re not hooligans,” Peter said, feeling a little self-conscious from Cheri’s announcement of his tendency to sprawl. 

“Yes, you are,” Ned said, already grabbing a pillow for himself. “Can I have the top sheet?” 

“Yeah,” Cheri replied, flipping back the actual comforter and tugging the top sheet free for him. She passed it over, and he set the pillow down on the floor beneath the window. When Harry reemerged from the bathroom ten minutes later, smelling as though he’d taken a quick shower himself, Ned went in, closing the door behind him.

Harry eyed Cheri. “Are you really going to go to bed with your hair wet?” he asked critically. 

Cheri frowned at him. “Yes,” she said. “Is that going to be a problem?” 

Harry sighed, clearly indicating that it would be, but he didn’t respond with words. Cheri turned away, and looked at Peter, who was examining his phone, sitting on the edge of the bed. 

“What’re you looking at?” she asked him. 

Peter shook his head, amused. “Tony saw that I did some work, earlier, and he texted me to yell about it,” he explained, and set his phone down on the side table, on the charger there. He then lounged back against the one remaining pillow, folding his arms behind his head. 

Harry clicked his tongue. “That’s not fair,” he said, under his breath. 

Cheri smiled a bit, and walked to the bed, crawling over Peter to get to the middle. “I might have to use you as a pillow,” she murmured to him, resting her head on his chest. “You know Harry needs two.”

Peter hummed. “I’m all right with that,” he said, sliding one of his arms around her. 

Harry let out a whine. “I want cuddles, too!” he insisted. 

Cheri looked at him, an eyebrow raised. “You’ll keep your hands to yourself?”

“I’ll try to keep the cuddles as platonic as possible,” Harry said, holding up his left hand, his right placed over his heart. 

“Pete?” Cheri prompted, and Peter smiled a bit, tilting his head. 

“You’re sleeping with us,” he said. “Might as well get in on the cuddles, too.”

Harry’s shoulders fell, possibly in relief, and he walked over to the bed, scooting in behind Cheri. Peter huffed outwards in amusement. 

“You’re both needy drunks,” he decided, reaching over Cheri to squeeze Harry’s arm in affection. 

Ned walked out of the bathroom five minutes later, and found the three of them still cuddled together. He rolled his eyes, and acted annoyed, until Peter looked at him, and raised his eyebrows. 

“Come on, man,” he said. “You’re missing out.”

Ned lingered at the foot of the bed for a long moment, before he visibly caved, and crawled up the mattress to join them. Harry snorted in amusement, and Ned lightly smacked the back of his head. 

“Shut the hell up.”

Somehow, they all drifted off to sleep, even though they were chatting quietly about this and that long after Peter had extricated himself to turn off the light, before returning to the bed. They were roused a bit whenever one of them would wake up long enough to say a word that wasn’t funny until you were on the verge of sleep, when it suddenly became the most hilarious thing in the world. After Harry quietly murmured, “Moist,” and sent them all into hysterics, none of them spoke again, and the room filled with their various noises of sleep. 

Peter thought he’d reached an REM cycle by the time he was abruptly woken by a banging on the door of the room. He sat up, startled, and blinked into the darkness, making out the finer details of things that none of the others would be able to see. All three of them were stirring as well, and Cheri was the first to curse quietly under her breath as she recognized what was going on. 

“Really? Now?” She huffed. “It’s 3 in the morning.”

“I know,” Peter agreed, sliding off the bed. “I’ll go tell them to go away.”

“Wait, Peter,” Harry said, barely snagging onto the bottom of the t-shirt he was wearing. “Don’t. It’ll stop, just wait.”

Peter sighed, but all the same sat back down on the edge of the bed. They all waited in silence for several moments. Eventually, as Harry said, the banging stopped. The quiet that followed was strange, almost. 

“Fuck,” Ned grumbled, rolling over. He’d somehow ended up at the foot of the bed. “Publicity or not, this shit sucks.”

“Yeah, well, at least it isn’t discordant evil children laughter, or something,” Cheri mumbled, pulling Peter back down so that she could lie on him again. 

“Weren’t we going to go exploring at three?” Harry asked, and Ned groaned, while Cheri snorted. 

“I thought you said you didn’t _want_ to go exploring.”

“Well, since I’m _awake,”_ Harry sighed, and sat up. Peter watched him move around to the side of the bed where he’d ditched his shoes, and sink out of sight, most likely to put them on. “Come on, guys.”

“Harry, what the fuck do you expect to find?” Ned muttered. He sounded as though he’d covered his face with his hands. 

“Nothing, really,” Harry said, “but I figure I can at least go play a haunting melody on the piano in the lobby, freak everybody out.”

And just like that, Cheri was sitting up, despite Peter’s quiet noise of disbelief. 

“I’m in,” she said, and climbed over him to grab her own shoes. 

“Seriously?” Peter asked, feeling exhausted. 

“Yeah,” Cheri said. She fumbled to find her shoes in the darkness, but grabbed one just as Peter turned on the light. 

“Fucking _really?”_ Ned exclaimed, sitting up straight. He needed a haircut, bad, Peter noted. 

“Ned really likes the word “fuck” when he’s sleepy,” Harry said, plucking the key to the room off the bedside table. 

“You can stay here, Ned,” Peter told him, scooting to the edge of the bed so that he could pull his own shoes on. “I can’t let these two go alone, though.”

Ned let out a long-suffering moan, reaching up to rub at his eyes. “Shit,” he muttered. “Fuck! Fine! We’ll all go, then! God.”

Cheri and Harry exchanged a pleased look while Ned continued to mutter to himself as he crawled off the bed and went to yank on his own shoes. 

When he had them on, Peter helped tug him to his feet. “Let’s go, then,” he said, “since this is what we’re doing, now, I guess.”

“Hell yeah,” Harry said, and he led the way out of the room, after unlocking the door. 

The hallway was vacated, but the lights were still on, no doubt for late-night wanderers, of which The Stanley most likely had plenty. All four of them made their way down the stairs, and Harry peered around the lobby for a moment, before making a bee-line towards the piano. He reached it, and cursed. 

“It’s locked!” he said, and Cheri shook her head. 

“It would be. Damn.”

“Well, let’s go poke around the music room,” Harry suggested, after frowning at the piano for a moment longer. “They can’t have locked up everything.”

“Doubtful,” Cheri sighed, all the same following after him. Peter did the same, with Ned bringing up the rear, still grumbling a little under his breath. “I bet Shane Dawson paid extra to be allowed to walk around at night the way they did. I know for a fact that they wouldn’t have been allowed in the ballroom, or whatever it was, otherwise.”

“We should’ve signed up for the tour,” Peter said. “I told you -”

“I know, I know,” Cheri said, dismissively, as they all paused in front of the music room. “It just seemed stupid to pay one hundred dollars to go on a tour that’ll tell us all the shit we can read about online.” She gestured vaguely, and Harry cursed again as he tugged on the door, only to find it was locked, too. “Besides, if we’re really buying into the idea that it’s all faked for publicity -”

She was cut off by a thudding from within the music room itself. Harry immediately pressed his face up against the window on the door, trying to see into the dark room. He couldn’t make anything out. 

“Peter -” he began, but was unable to finish his request as something else thudded in the room. It sounded as though something had fallen to the floor. A discordant piano chord rang out, startling Harry backwards away from the door. 

“The fuck -?”

Cheri let out a yelp as something flew into the door from the other side, rattling the wood with a loud thunk. She scooted backwards into Peter, who wrapped a protective arm around her, frowning at the door. 

“Okay,” he began, after a moment. “Let’s get away from here.”

“You kidding?” Harry asked. “We need to see what’s going on in there!”

“As if,” Ned said, looking much more awake, now. “I’m going back upstairs, and I’m going to try to go back to sleep, despite knowing for a fact that something like _that_ couldn’t be staged.”

“What do you mean?” Harry questioned. “There could be someone in there, throwing shit around and playing the piano.”

“Right, sure,” Ned responded, crossing his arms. “Because you wouldn’t have seen them when you looked through the window.”

“It’s pitch fucking black in there, dude,” Harry pointed out. He looked at Peter. “Could you see something?” 

Peter didn’t feel inclined to peer through the window, even if he _could_ see something. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. But I’m not sure I want to know either way.”

“C’mon, Peter,” Harry insisted. He gestured to the door. “Just a quick peek. Satiate my curiosity.”

Peter sighed, quietly. “Cher?”

Cheri blinked, and then lowered her gaze to the floor. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, just… take a look.”

Peter scooted away from her, and joined Harry near the door. He hesitated a moment, before cupping one hand against the window, and looking in. 

He could barely make out more than Harry had. Different shapes littered the floor, tables, possibly. It looked like a few smaller shapes, chairs? were toppled over, away from the tables. He couldn’t see the piano, which he knew was at the back of the room. 

From what he could tell, there was no one in the room. 

He backed away from the window again, shrugging a bit, nerves bubbling in his chest. “I mean, it looks like chairs might’ve fallen over,” he said, “but I couldn’t see anyone.”

Harry exchanged a look with Cheri, who immediately shook her head in response to whatever Harry’s expression meant. Harry made a face, and held out his hand expectantly. 

“Harry, _no,”_ Cheri insisted. 

“Harry no what?” Ned asked, glancing over his shoulder, as though he expected someone to come up behind them and bust them for wandering around after dark at any second. 

“C’mon, Cheri,” Harry said. “Don’t you want to know?” 

“Not really,” Cheri replied. “I want to go back upstairs and forget about this.”

“Cheri, please.” Harry put his hands together in a pleading gesture. “When do I ever ask you for anything?” 

“All the time?” Harry stuck out his lower lip, just a little, and Cheri groaned. “We’ll get into so much trouble if someone _is_ in there.” she pointed out. 

“Whoa, wait, _what?”_ Peter demanded. He looked at Harry. “You want to _break in?”_

Harry made a small noise in his throat. “I mean, it wouldn’t be _breaking_ in,” he said. “I’d pick the lock. _Breaking_ in, I think, would involve _breaking_ something.”

“Since when do you know how to pick locks?” Ned asked, frowning. 

“Since I was thirteen,” Harry said, and he looked at Cheri again. “C’mon, I _know_ you have a bobby pin.”

“Harold -”

“Cheryl.”

Cheri groaned, and Peter looked at her, brows together. “Don’t, Cheri,” he said. “Please. This is not a good idea in any capacity. We will get in trouble.”

“What’re they gonna do, sue us?” Harry asked. 

“Probably!” Peter replied. 

“Okay, so we sue them back, for false publicity, or whatever,” Harry said. 

“False advertisement, I think,” Ned put in, quietly. 

“Yeah, that,” Harry agreed. 

“We wouldn’t be able to make that stick,” Peter said, rolling his eyes, “but they _would_ be able to get us for breaking and entering!”

 _“Not_ breaking,” Harry said again. 

“Guys,” Cheri interrupted, before Peter could retort, and all three men looked at her. She was staring at the door to the music room, her eyes wide. “Something moved past the window.”

“Oh, please,” Ned mumbled. 

“I’m serious,” Cheri insisted. 

“Okay, I’m making an executive decision,” Peter decided. “We’re going back upstairs.” 

“But I want to see what’s inside!” Harry said. 

Another bang against the door, startling all four of them. Peter clicked his tongue, in an effort to hide his rising fear. 

“Upstairs,” he said, sharply. “Now.”

Amazed by his tone, Ned immediately turned and started towards the main part of the lobby. Harry glared at Peter for a moment.

“Harry,” Cheri said, and he huffed, quietly, but all the same followed after Ned. 

Peter reached out and took Cheri’s arm, gently. “Let’s go,” he said, quietly, and tugged her away from the music room. Cheri glanced over her shoulder one final time, watching as yet another shadow drifted past the window. A chill scooted up her spine, and she turned forward, deciding that maybe she wanted to stick with reading horror novels, rather than experience them in real life.


	4. The Day After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are resolved.

**July 29th, 2024 - Stanley Hotel - 333 E Wonderview Ave, Estes Park, CO, USA**

The tweeting of birds outside the hotel room window was a stark contrast to the frightening air that had permeated Cheri’s dreams, and the night before. She opened her eyes, blinking in the sunlight drifting in past the curtains. She tried to stretch, but found that her feet were impeded. She nudged whatever was blocking her with her toes, and heard Ned’s soft grunt in response. 

_Oh, yeah, we’re all in the same bed._

She sat up, and waited for her head to catch up with her body. Harry was curled up as far over to one side of the bed as he could get. He hadn’t been in as cuddly a mood after they’d all gotten back to the hotel room from their mis-adventures outside the music room. Peter lay on her other side; she could tell he was feigning sleep. Ned was indeed at the foot of the bed, and had drifted off again, after she’d kicked him. 

Cheri exhaled, and then regretted breathing in immediately as nausea flitted into her stomach, and bile rose up in her throat. _Right. Whisky. Fuck._ She recognized that her head was pounding, and she groaned, softly, leaning over and resting against Peter’s side. 

“Hey,” he greeted, softly, and his hand drifted over her hair. “Alcohol caught up with you finally, hm?” 

“Shut up,” Cheri mumbled, eyes closed. “I could throw up on you.”

He chuckled, and rotated until she was resting her head on his stomach instead. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “I can go get you some aspirin; they probably have some in the gift shop.”

“Why do gift shops sell medicine?” Cheri asked, and heard Peter’s smile in his response. 

“For cases like this, probably,” he said. “Hold on.” He shifted out from beneath her, and gently helped her lay back down. “I’ll be right back.”

Cheri listened as he went about the room, getting dressed, and pulling his shoes on, before he left. She hummed, softly, and flipped over, intending to cuddle up next to Harry instead. She pressed her forehead into the space between his shoulder blades, and he squirmed a little. 

“Stop that,” he grumbled. “Y’know I’m ticklish back there.”

Cheri smiled. “You feel as bad as I do?” she prompted, remaining where she was. 

“Mm, probably not, because three assholes made me chug water while I was drinking,” Harry mumbled in response. He rolled over to face her, and Cheri immediately scooted in closer, resting her head on his shoulder as he slid an arm around her. “I’m sorry about this morning,” he said, after a moment. 

Cheri sighed. “You don’t need to apologize to me,” she told him. 

“I do,” he insisted. “I tried to make you implicit in my breaking and entering scheme.”

“I thought it wasn’t _breaking?”_ she asked, amused, and he snorted, squeezing her a little bit tighter in retribution for her making fun. 

“Whatever.” 

“Can you guys shut the hell up?” Ned asked from the foot of the bed. “It’s too fucking early.”

“It’s ten in the morning, Ned,” Harry informed him. 

“My point stands,” Ned grumbled. “It’s still morning.” 

Cheri reached behind her, and then tossed Peter’s pillow towards him. “Here,” she said. “Use this to block out sound and light.”

Ned covered his head with it, and Cheri readjusted, getting more comfortable against Harry’s side. 

“You’re so bony,” she said to him. 

“Thank you, it’s my debilitating illness,” Harry responded. 

She snorted, and somehow ended up drifting off a little bit in the silence that followed. Peter returning to the room with a mini bottle of aspirin brought her back. 

“All right, drunkards,” he said, keeping his voice at a low level. “I’ve got meds.”

“Mm, do we have to pay?” Harry asked. 

“Not this time,” Peter replied, and Cheri heard the pills rattle in the bottle as he shook some out. “But only ‘cause I’m feeling generous this morning.”

She pushed herself upright again, ignoring Harry’s grunt as she used his chest to do so, and accepted the two aspirin Peter passed her, as well as the paper cup from the bathroom. She swallowed the pills down with water, and watched as Peter handed Harry the same things. 

“These pills are always so bitter,” he said, but tossed them in his mouth all the same. 

“Ned,” Peter said, and picked up the pillow, exposing Ned’s head. “C’mon, dude, aspirin’ll help.”

“I’m not that bad,” Ned mumbled, covering his face with his hands. “It was just hard lemonade.”

“Yeah, but three glasses of it,” Peter reminded him. “After you haven’t really drank alcohol for a while.” He held out his hand, and Ned sighed, but accepted the two aspirin that rested on his palm, as well as the cup he held in the other. 

“I could use some coffee,” Cheri decided, rubbing her forehead. “Anyone else?” 

“The restaurant is open,” Peter supplied, and Harry grunted, scooting closer to the edge of the bed and standing. He swayed, a little.

“Coffee sounds good,” he said, when he’d steadied himself. 

“I’ll go get a table while you guys get ready,” Peter said, turning to head for the door again. Cheri made her way over to her luggage, and retrieved some clothing for herself. 

“I get the bathroom,” she said to the men, walking that way. 

“Whatever,” Harry called back. “I’ve seen Ned’s dick, and he’s seen mine. We’re not weird about it!”

“The weird thing is when you make a point of reminding everyone all the time,” Ned sighed, sitting up at last. He rubbed at his eyes, and gestured vaguely towards his suitcase. “Gimme clothes.”

“Get them yourself,” Harry said, but all the same flipped open his suitcase and retrieved a pair of shorts and a t-shirt for him. He tossed them over his shoulder in Ned’s general direction, before turning to his own luggage. 

Cheri reemerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, dressed, breath minty fresh. Harry scooted past her into the bathroom himself, and she looked at Ned. 

“How’s your head?” she asked him. 

“Not bad,” Ned replied, running a hand through his hair. “I need a haircut.”

“I noticed that this morning,” Cheri agreed with a smile. “I can do it for you, if you don’t want to spend ten dollars at a salon.” 

Ned frowned. “You’ve never cut hair before in your life,” he said. 

“Wrong,” Cheri responded. “I’ve cut Peter’s hair several times. He never has time to go get it cut by a professional.” She considered Ned’s hair. “Cutting yours would be different, probably, since you have different styles, but I think I could do it.”

Ned hummed noncommittally, and then stood as the bathroom door opened again, and Harry walked back out. Cheri frowned at him as Ned moved around her to take his turn. 

“Did you even brush _your_ hair?” she queried, and Harry stuck out his tongue. 

“So what if I didn’t?” 

“You can tell,” Cheri replied, sitting down to pull her shoes on. She hesitated when she noticed something on the bottom of one, and flipped it over to get a better look at what it was. She let out a sharp exhale, and quickly dropped the shoe, scrambling to her feet. 

“What?” Harry asked, frowning in concern. 

Cheri pointed to her shoe, aware that her hand was shaking. “I - I think there’s blood on the bottom of my shoe.”

“Blood?” Harry walked over, and picked up the shoe himself. He examined the dark substance on the bottom of it for a moment, before shaking his head. “I don’t think this is blood, kid.”

“What is it, then?” Cheri asked, and Harry lifted his shoulders. 

“Could be anything,” he said. “Paint, maybe.” He held the shoe out to her. “Let’s go. We don’t want to make Peter wait too long.”

Cheri stared at the shoe for a moment before taking it, gingerly, and sinking back down to pull it on. Ned walked out of the bathroom, and glanced between the two of them. 

“What?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” Harry replied. He moved around him, and went to the door of the room. “Someone got the key?”

“Yeah,” Cheri replied, picking up the spare from where it sat on the edge of the desk. She watched Ned finish tugging on his shoes, and then exited the room ahead of Harry. “Let’s go find Pete.”

* * *

The food was okay, but they were all glad that they’d gotten dinner from someplace else the night prior. The waiter that served them was curious as to how their first night had gone. Peter was able to get him to stop asking questions by redirecting their attention to the food order, but Cheri and Harry looked at one another, obviously thinking the same thing: why ask, unless you expected to be able to learn something that might better help with the marketing ploy that was the “haunted hotel”?

When they were done eating, and the bill had been paid, they headed back out into the lobby, and then outside. They all eyed the maze for a moment, before collectively turning away from it entirely. 

They found a gazebo of sorts elsewhere on the grounds, and Ned jogged up into it, glancing around from the middle for a moment. 

“People think gazebos are romantic,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

“Probably because you’ve never slow danced in one,” Harry pointed out, joining him. “Cheri, serenade us.”

“The fuck?” Cheri asked, frowning, while Peter grinned and walked around to the other side of the gazebo, examining the structure. Yeah, he could build one, for sure. Steve and Bucky would probably want to help, but he thought it’d be pretty simple. 

_He_ thought gazebos were romantic, and he very much wanted to get married to Cheri in one. 

Cheri had begun to hum, per Harry’s request, and when he rejoined her, he saw that Harry had pulled Ned to him, and they were now participating in a simple two-step. Ned looked pained, but Harry seemed into it, tugging Ned along with him. 

“Do you get it now?” he asked, and Ned looked over at Cheri and Peter, brow furrowed. He mouthed “Help me,” but Peter pretended not to see, looking at Cheri. 

“Do you think gazebos are romantic?” he asked, a little hopeful. 

“Oh, yeah,” Cheri replied. “Did you ever watch _Casper Meets Wendy?”_ Peter shook his head, and she grinned. “Remind me to show it to you. Anyway, there’s a scene where they dance in a gazebo, and I thought it was the most romantic thing in the world when I was younger. Now, it’s just cute as hell, but y’know, the idea of the romanticism of it still stands.”

“I fucking _loved_ _Casper Meets Wendy,”_ Harry exclaimed. 

“He did,” Cheri said. “Whenever he’d come over to our apartment, it was the only thing he’d let me watch.” 

“My dad said it was a girl movie,” Harry said, finally letting Ned go. He stumbled over to the steps of the gazebo, and sank down on them with a heavy exhalation. 

“Wasn’t it Hilary Duff’s first movie?” he asked, glancing between Harry and Cheri.

“It was,” Cheri confirmed. She looked at Peter again. “Now you _really_ need to watch it.”

“As fun as it is to remember childhood things like that,” Harry began, sitting down beside Ned, “I think we need to talk about what happened in the music room.”

“What do you mean?” Ned asked him, resting his chin in his hand. “There was somebody in there throwing stuff around. Cheri saw a shadow.”

Harry made a face. “Do we all think that’s what it was?” he questioned, glancing up at Peter and Cheri. 

“I’d rather think that than the alternative,” Cheri replied, after exchanging a glance with Peter. 

“Well, yeah, I’m sure we all would,” Harry agreed, “but can we? Realistically?”

“Harry, come on,” Ned said. “Yesterday, you were the one who was like, “Fuck ghosts, they’re fake as hell,” and now you’re trying to convince yourself, and all of us, that it might be real?”

Harry’s shoulders fell. “I dunno,” he said. “I guess I just… I’d prefer for something to be real, nowadays. Everything seems like it’s faked to make money, or for some other benefit. If ghosts _are_ real, it’s kind of shitty of the hotel to pretend that they’re haunting the place, when they aren’t. Does that make any sense?”

Peter exhaled. “I get it,” he said, “but Harry, it’s - it’s unlikely that ghosts exist, and if they do, they definitely aren’t here at a hotel where no one’s ever died.”

Harry lowered his gaze. “Yeah,” he said, quietly. “Probably not.” 

“I get wanting to solve a mystery,” Cheri said, “but I don’t think there is one, here. Just a hotel using what’s on-hand to attract more guests.” She shrugged. “It’s smart of them, if a little extreme.”

Ned was frowning. “But what about what happened in the maze?” he asked. “The hotel couldn’t have had anything to do with you blacking out and wandering off.”

Cheri rubbed her arm, and shook her head. “I don’t know about that,” she admitted, “but I don’t want to think about it, to be honest.”

None of the others could blame her for that. Peter reached out and tugged her closer to him, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. 

“It’s fine,” he said, quietly. “We don’t need to talk about it. Let’s just try to have a good time, find, like, the hilarity in the attempts of the hotel to pretend it’s haunted.” 

“Yeah,” Ned agreed, after a moment. “Yeah, it’s - it’s one big joke. It’s fun.”

“Well, maybe fun is a strong word,” Harry said, “but we can make it fun, I think.”

“Definitely,” Cheri said, relaxing a bit. She smiled at the three of them. “Just like a haunted house during Halloween. It’s supposed to be fun, and the four of us can make anything a good time.”

Resolving to do just that, make the trip fun, which was what it had been meant to be, the four of them spent the remainder of the day taking advantage of the hotel itself, and all it had to offer. Harry wanted to visit the Rocky Mountain National Park, which was only two miles away from the hotel, and after spending several minutes pointing out how cool it would be, the other three gave in, and they all piled into their rental car to head for the park. 

They hiked through it, Harry running around and pointing out different species of plant. The others listened in a mixture of amusement and affection for their nature-loving friend. Ned mostly kept his attention on the ground, so he wouldn’t trip and fall off the path they were following. Peter and Cheri walked along hand-in-hand behind the two of them, feeling parental. 

Being away from the hotel was like being out in the fresh air. The national park was not only gorgeous; it felt safe, too, much safer than the hotel. If given the opportunity, there was no doubt that the group would’ve been willing to make camp someplace in the park, rather than return to the hotel, even after the fiasco that had been their first, and only, camping trip. 

Alas, they’d only purchased day passes, and thus had no choice but to return to the car, and drive back to the hotel, when the sun began to set. Harry lounged in the back seat beside Ned with his arms crossed, frowning out the window at the passing wilderness. 

“Stupid,” he grumbled, and not for the first time. 

“Harry, we paid for two nights at the Stanley,” Peter reminded him. “Even if the place sucks, it gave us the chance to go to the park in the first place.” 

Harry exhaled. “That’s true,” he muttered, and sat up a bit straighter. “I’m glad we’re going back to New York tomorrow. I miss the apartment.”

They all did. 

When they reached the hotel again, they all headed upstairs to 217. Cheri walked through, first, and paused when she saw that all of their suitcases and/or duffle bags had been opened, and their clothes were missing. 

“Shit,” she said, shoulders falling. 

“Where the hell are our clothes?” Harry demanded, holding out his arms. 

Cheri sighed, and walked over to the dresser against one wall, tugging open the drawer. She nodded to herself, and gestured to it. 

“One of the “ghosts” is known for unpacking people’s luggage for them,” she explained. The three men peered into the drawer, and saw it was full of neatly folded clothing. “Guess that’s the ploy they’re going with this time around.”

Peter shrugged. “Better than the incessant knocking in the middle of the night,” he said, and walked into the bathroom, flipping the light on. He wasn’t surprised to see that the crack that had appeared in the mirror the day before was no longer there. “And they fixed the mirror!” 

Ned poked his head into the bathroom, and snorted. “Ghosts can’t fix stuff,” he said. “These people need to do their research.”

“And I think the smell of leaking gas is a little much,” Harry added. Peter immediately sniffed, and made a face as the smell of cabon monoxide entered his senses. 

“I didn’t even notice that,” Cheri said, as Peter pushed his way past Ned out of the bathroom again. “Where could that be coming from?” 

Peter had approached one of the old-timey light sconces on the wall that had remained unlit thus far, most likely no longer in use. He leaned up on his toes, and sniffed again, before immediately backing away from the wall. 

“Everyone out,” he ordered, tugging open the door. “The gas smell isn’t fake; this sconce is leaking.”

“Shit,” Ned sighed, and exited the room first. 

“Are you serious?” Harry asked, and when Peter nodded, cursed quietly under his breath, and followed Ned. 

“So much for having fun,” Cheri said as she passed him out of the room as well, and Peter joined all four of them in the hall, closing the door behind them. “Guess we better tell someone at the front desk.”

“As long as no one takes an open flame in there, it should be fine,” Peter said. “I doubt it’s been leaking for long; we would’ve smelled it before now. If one of us starts vomiting, there’ll be bigger problems, but we should be okay.”

They all headed downstairs again, and Peter went over to the front desk to speak to the staff member standing there. Cheri joined him. 

“There’s a gas leak in room 217,” Peter said, and the man furrowed his brow. 

“You sure?” he asked. “Guests report smelling carbon monoxide in that room all the time.”

“I’m sure,” Peter said. “It’s leaking out of one of those old light sconces on the wall.”

The man’s shoulders fell. “I’ll call maintenance,” he said, reaching for the phone on the desk. “Do you have a second room booked that you can wait in, while they fix it?” 

“Yeah,” Peter said, flatly. “Thanks.”

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the man said, but Peter had taken Cheri’s arm, and was pulling her away towards Ned and Harry already. 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly to her, and Cheri glanced up at him, frowning. 

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “I should be the one apologizing. We wouldn’t have ever gone on this trip if I wasn’t such a weirdo.”

“There’s nothing weird about having things that you like, and want to experience,” Peter said. “It’s not your fault that this place is not what you thought it’d be.”

“And it’s not your fault, either,” Cheri told him. “You only wanted to do something nice for me.”

“Stop blaming yourselves,” Harry said, hearing their conversation as they approached where he and Ned had settled down in armchairs. “It’s neither of your faults that this place sucks ass.”

“Yeah,” Ned said. “And I mean, even if this place sucks, we still had a good time being here together, right? And hiking earlier?”

Peter smiled a bit at that. “You’re right, Ned,” he agreed. “This was a fun trip, because the four of us were together.” He glanced over at Cheri, and nudged her with his arm. “We should take more trips as a group.”

Cheri shook her head. “Only if I don’t have to sit next to Harry on the plane,” she said, and grinned at Harry to show she was only teasing. 

All the same, he flipped her off, they all chortled. It _had_ been a good trip, for four best friends. Shared experiences only helped to bring people closer, even when they were terrible ones, like the realization that a “haunted hotel” wasn’t necessarily the fun and games place it seemed to be from the outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea where this universe goes, after this. There's plenty of options, all of which I have begun, but cannot seem to pick between.   
> As such. Loyal readers. Please respond to the survey linked at the end of this note, if you can. I need direction, guidance, and it seems to me the best option to ask for that from those who are getting something out of this.   
> <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScvQ-zMlAdF-Bd7GuaQxtri2O_9RRNjBvrBDUmprgZIcaVnyQ/viewform?usp=sf_link>


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